I realize the article was intended to be on protein but you stated that it is unlikely that carbohydrates will be stored as fat under normal circumstances as well.

This leaves dietary fat as pretty much the sole possibility for getting fat. Somehow this doesn't sit well with me. If I eat a low fat, high carb, moderate protein diet ala the food pyramid excess calories still get packed on as fat. I'm a little confused here.

There's different pathways how caloric balance holds in the end. Dietary carbohydrates stop you from burning fat (via, for example, raising insulin) and are burned for energy instead.
So if you eat 2000 kcal of fat and burn 1500 over the day, you store (numbers pulled out of my butt) 1000 kcal, burn off 1000 kcal directly from your blood, and 500 you release from bodyfat stores and burn them off later. Net storage: 500 kcal of fat.
If you eat 1000 kcal of fat and 1000 kcal of carbs, you burn off all of the carbs and 500 kcal of fat, and store 500 kcal of fat and don't burn any old fat. Net storage: 500 kcal of fat.
Same holds for any other meal composition IN PRINCIPLE.

"Make no mistake, the conversion of carbs to fat (a process called de-novo lipogenesis or DNL) can happen but the requirements for it to happen significantly are fairly rare in humans under most conditions (to discuss this in detail would require a full article, interested readers can search Medline for work by Hellerstein or Acheson on the topic).

Which means that the odds of protein being converted to fat in any quantitatively meaningful fashion is simply not going to happen"

I'm reading your article Lyle and this is what it says. There are 3 macros, fat, carbohydrate, and protein. If I don't gain fat from protein or carbohydrates yet I still gain fat then this only leaves dietary fat.

Clearly you are assuming that the reader has some knowledge in advance of reading this article that I do not. I'm guessing other readers will not either.

Did you read Nutrient Intake, Oxidation and Storage? Because that's the background that you need and I wrote that to avoid typing it up again. And I linked it in today's article for that reason. And told you to read it for that same reason.

So save your ire, I told you where to get the background you needed but instead of doing that, you wasted yet more time getting aggro with me and quoting from today's article.

Your illogic is in assuming that only fat can make you fat because only fat is stored as fat but that is illogical for reasons THAT ARE EXPLAINED IN THE ARTICLE I BOTH LINKED IN TODAY'S ARTICLE AND ASKED YOU TO READ.

Beacuse if you had done that rather than wasting more bandwidth complaining, you might have seen this

Quote:

So when you eat more carbs, you burn more carbs and burn less fat; eat less carbs and you burn less carbs and burn more fat. And donít jump to the immediate conclusion that lowcarb diets are therefore superior for fat loss because lowcarb diets are also higher in fat intake (generally speaking). Youíre burning more fat, but youíre also eating more. But thatís a topic that Iíve not only addressed previously on the site but may look at in more detail in a future article with this piece as background.

Which is the answer to your question (and also applies to both alcohol and protein).

But since you opted to ignore both the link in today's article and my suggestion to complain at me instead, now you're sitting there upset at me.

Keep in mind: This is a FREE forum that I do it as a FREE service. Don't think that you deserve an answer for any reason. This is true even if you purchased a book. Most in this field do no customer support. But don't think you own me because you made a book purchase.